There is still no health app that focuses on doctors’ requirements: Nipun Goyal

In less than a year, Curofy has more than 45,000 doctors who are using it very actively and more than 50,000 cases are discussed each month.Shahid Akhter | ETHealthWorld | Updated: February 22, 2016, 11:10 IST

Nipun Goyal, co-founder, Curofy, Gurgaon, talks to ETHealthworld about the need of an online platform for doctors to discuss and exchange knowledge.

1.How do you see the current market scenario in healthcare apps?

Health apps are upcoming phenomena from past one and a half years. A lot of health apps have come up particularly in the Indian market ranging from doctor booking, online consultation and even online delivery of medicines. There has also been a lot of capital inflow from Portea, Lybrate and Practo. All this has led to a surge in health apps. But I feel there is one thing which is still missing and that is a health app that focuses on doctors’ requirements.

A lot of players are working on getting patients involved in digital health but not enough work has been done in getting doctors involved in digital health especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. The doctors in these cities don’t even have a proper eco system to remain updated about what is happening in their industry and this is one major missing piece in the current scenario of Indian health apps.

2. What is the global scenario?

On the global side, there have been a lot of players working on creating value for doctors. Also, there are few players in the doctors’ networking space as well but I feel that these players are focusing more on doctors of developed countries. There are very few players who are doing significantly in this domain in developing countries.

The health sector in itself will see a huge growth in the near future. An Allied Market Research Report projects that the market is going to grow more than 50 Billion dollars by 2020.

3. Please brief us about your company, it’s business and it’s products?

Curofy is an exclusive networking app for doctors. It helps them to stay up to date in their practice and collaborate on patient cases. In less than one year of its launch, the app has more than 45,000 doctors who are using it very actively. We have more than 50,000 cases discussed each month on our app.

We are trying to create an ecosystem for all the doctors that can help them discuss cases, read daily news based on their interest area, get jobs related to what they are doing and do a lot of peer to peer help.

4.What have you brought to the table?

There are many factors that directly impact doctor’s reputation management in networking angle because there is no WhatsApp or a Facebook group that connects all the doctors. This is where relevance of Curofy comes into picture. We have an algorithm which makes it very relevant for doctors to communicate with each other. Eg: If you are a pediatrician, you will see more pediatric content on the app. We are trying to value whatever time the doctor spends on the app.

Now coming to the medical industry side, Curofy is delivering a huge engagement of doctors on its app. On a typical week a doctor spends 25 minutes on the app. This opens a lot of avenues for the industry to reach out to doctors as per the comfort of doctors. Many a times even after so much efforts the doctor is not able to give the time to these MR’s due to his hectic schedule.

This is where we are trying to provide an opportunity to the pharma companies as well as other stake holders like hospitals and medical devices industry to infuse their content in the system that is already in place.

5.What makes this particular concept different from others?

There are few things that are our USPs. Firstly, we are very strong on relevance as I already mentioned and value the time spent by doctor. The other thing is we have a huge focus on verification of doctors. This helps in maintaining the authenticity of the network because trust is very important in healthcare. When you give the doctors an environment which is highly authentic and highly verified it gives them the comfort to discuss these things as a community. These are the things that differentiate us from any other health app.

6. Where did the initial capital for the innovation come from? What returns does it have?

Last year, there was this event which was giving live funding on the spot. There were 7 investors who committed at that moment itself after listening to our pitch. Those investors are highly reputed and are entrepreneurs themselves. They include: Rajul Garg, Alok Mittal and India Quotient. Recently, we got funded from a healthcare VC called Round Glass Partners, they come with a strong healthcare expertise and network that has been one of the key reasons why we have grown so fast over last 2 and a half months.

Coming on the revenue side we have started doing some pilots as a lot of industry players like pharma, Medtech and hospitals have been reaching out to us and asking how they can participate in the network. We recently did pilot with few hospitals wherein we provided them with candidates for different type of jobs. Our whole focus is to change the behavior of digital health communication. The app which will have the most amount of time spent by doctors will be able to influence the digital health communication because doctors are the gate keepers of the healthcare industry.

7. Which leading hospitals are using the app? How many medicos are registered with it?

As I have mentioned we have done a lot of pilots specially in terms of providing candidates for different type of jobs to hospital. This includes, semi-government hospitals like St. Johns also we have received a lot of jobs from hospitals like: Fortis, Apollo, Columbia Asia, Cygnus and Rockland.

8.What challenges did you face when you were starting out?

The biggest problem that we had to face was probably the same which is being faced by the industry right now and that is the difficulty to reach out to doctors. It took us a lot of time and effort to get that initial 1000 doctors on Curofy. But once that happened, things started picking up by itself and doctors started referring each other about the app.

Now we are at a stage that these 1000 doctors come on a single day on the app. Currently the major challenge we are trying to solve is too keep the relevance intact because that is going to be the key when we are asking doctors to spend time on the app.

8.What is the revenue generation model?

As I said we would really want to focus on increasing the relevance, whatever it takes! May be it takes us 6 months, 1 year or 2 years but we will stay focused on relevance and creating value for doctors. We want to become the digital world for doctors wherein whatever they need, we are able to provide in terms of health communication. Similarly, on the industry side we would also want to solve their problem of reaching out to doctors. We are in the process of building a strong tech-team as well as a doctor team. There are a lot of doctors whom we started engaging and are now associating with us to help young doctors for their different problems.

Shortly, you will see the KOL’s start engaging more often on Curofy. Then we would really want to go global, we have already been approached by a lot of people from countries like Singapore, Africa, Middle East. Once we are strong in India, we would definitely grow in a lot of these developing countries with the help of local channel partners.

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